Late Night Worries
by Natsumi Wakabe
Summary: Haldir tries to comfort his lover, who is lost to an inner battle late at night.


_Disclaimer: Wakabe Writing Firm doesn't own Lord of the Rings_

_A/N: Natsumi would normally be here, but she's hiding from Isuzu again. Anyways, she'd like to say she knows this pairing makes no sense, but she loves them for some odd reasson. Hope you enjoy, and please review.-Damon (Banshee Secretary, Wakabe Writing Firm)_

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Haldir came slowly up from the realm of dreams, the glaze of sleep slowly slipping from his eyes until he blinked away the last of it. Knowing that he had gone to bed with company last night, he frowned when he felt only the cool cloth against his skin, and reached out to the other side of the bed, his frown deepening when the place next to him proved to be cold, no trace of the body that had accompanied him to sleep to be found there. He looked around the darkened room, eyes instantly latching onto the silhouette of the man who had should have been in bed with him, not staring out into the night with those eyes that Haldir so loved to get lost in.

"Estel, come to bed."

"I'm not tired." The reply is whispered, hardly loud enough to be heard even in the silence of the night, more of a sigh of words than anything. But Haldir feels those words resonate to his bones. It was looking like this was not to be a good night.

"If you're not tired, then I haven't done my job as your lover properly." There was no reply, no little twitch of muscle or sudden and small rise of shoulders to give proof of a silenced laugh that he would want to coax out into the open. The blond elf frowned, rising up from his elbows until he was upright. "Estel?"

The silence that follows is too long, and though he does not sigh, Haldir knows that his lover wants to sigh, wants to release that breathe that will admit to the air around him of the burden of admission of what weighs him down. And if Haldir had not been from a race of creatures who could listen to grass grow and hear it expand and breath and be that he would have.

"It's nothing, melethron."

Haldir sighs. "Estel..."

"Really, it's nothing." The voice from the man still not facing him is too hollow, too forced, and whatever spell of despair or sorrow that has taken his lover from the safety and warmth of their shared bed, Haldir hates it with a passion usually only reserved for the foul creatures that he patrols his home's borders for. He gets out of bed, sheet tugged up and then around his waist as he goes to join the heir of Isildur where he stands. He does not embrace him, not yet. Such a thing is not what he needs just yet, no matter that Haldir might wish that his embrace would be enough to chase away the dark thoughts of tiny glimpses of the future, prophesies that demand his life be given up in order to serve the better good, that in Haldir's arms, Estel would be safe from the world that will one day take him to a place Haldir cannot and will not follow.

"Go back to sleep; I will join you soon enough."

"And how long will that be?"

"Not long."

"Estel..." This time, the plea is more palpable, not exasperated, not annoyed, merely concerned. This is not the first time they have done this dance of words and not-words, speaking a language of avoided gazes and not-touches.

"It's nothing, melethron." A hand comes up, gently steering the face to look over the shoulder to the Silvan elf whose eyes see past the mask in ways that even the Man's foster-father has failed to do so. And Estel wants to lean into his broad shoulders, let his almost white blond hair obscure the world from sight and confess to him the burdens of a mind too full of the past and future to ever escape in the present.

"Then look at me." It takes time, but eventually, storm grey eyes peek out from beneath their curtain of dark lashes, glazed with the sweeping sorrows that are as much a part of his beloved Estel as his mischievous smile and fierce protective nature. It is not a part of him that Haldir enjoys, for all that it is a small enough sacrifice for one that has been through the loss of home twice already.

"Estel."

A name, that is all he says, but it is enough. Estel sighs and leans into the welcomed warmth and support of his lover.

"Meleth..." But no words follow. The die in his throat, too much and too little, never able to pass the gates of his lips.

_Talk to me_, Haldir wants to say. He wants to coax the worries from the overburdened mind of his lover, wants to slay them and drive back that darkness that is a part of his lover's future that reaches back to the present in order to keep him up at night, gazing upon the land with eyes that see too much. Haldir wants to get inside the battlefield that is his lover's mind, and make war against so many dark thoughts and deeds and words that come too often in a world that is quickly losing its light, even as the pockets of joy become brighter and more beautiful. They are little comfort here, when his lover has been ensnared by that darkness.

So he contents himself with just holding his lover, ready to listen if he chooses to talk, praying that with the breaking of day, his Estel will no longer be haunted by the darkened clouds of Tomorrow and the storm of Yesterday.

It's not much of a hope, but it's all he has. And for now, it is enough.


End file.
